


To Help Atlas

by alicekittridge



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, Mild Angst, POV Third Person, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:55:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29917248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: It’s still so strange, Dani thinks. She doesn’t look a day over twenty-seven and yet Jamie has lived a lifetime more than Dani’s meager twenty-six. So much joy, and pain, and grief and happiness and everything in between bundled into an age.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	To Help Atlas

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. I thought I wrote canon but then this made an appearance at work today and wouldn't leave me alone until I stayed up till one in the morning writing and editing it. So... enjoy?? And thank you for reading xx

**“Y** ou haven’t asked.”

Dani lowers the mouth of a beer bottle from her lips, her gaze turning to fall on Jamie, sprawled easily in the sun, eyes closed to its glare. Almost sleeping, if she could do such a thing. Puzzled, Dani says, “Asked?”

“How old I am.”

She laughs, then, a short sound of amusement and disbelief. “I didn’t think it was polite. Or appropriate.”

“Thought I’d be offended?” Jamie says.

Dani shakes her head. “No. I thought… you wouldn’t want to be reminded.” It’s still so strange, Dani thinks. She doesn’t look a day over twenty-seven and yet Jamie has lived a lifetime more than Dani’s meager twenty-six. So much joy, and pain, and grief and happiness and everything in between bundled into an age. She’d shared some of it, the night of the moonflowers, a story that, in the moment of its telling, Dani realized Jamie didn’t share with just anyone. A life like that, a secret at the center of it all, was one only a privileged few were lucky to hear.

“Why me?” Dani had said, in the enclosed safety of her bedroom, breathless from kissing Jamie again at last. “Why… tell me?”

Jamie’s reply was soft. “You’re different.”

Dani didn’t joke, didn’t laugh. Just let cool hands cradle her face while she waited for the rest.

“I don’t… do this,” Jamie began, the words coming out slow and weighted. “Let humans into my life. Get too curious, get too close, get really bloody scared. Would just… do what we needed and that was it.” A deep breath, thumbs brushing Dani’s cheeks. “Then you stumbled into this damn place and I… couldn’t keep you away.”

Dani put her hands atop Jamie’s. “What changed?”

“Like I said. Some people are worth the effort.” A soft kiss. “You’re not scared?”

“No,” Dani replied. “Never was. Not of you, or Hannah or Owen, once I knew. I felt like I was living in a dream,” she said around a laugh, “if that’s what you mean.” She took a breath. “I’m not scared.”

Jamie nodded. Whispered, “All right.”

“So considerate,” Jamie says now, her smile bright, but it hangs in the air. That question. It’s like she can see it burning inside Dani’s mind. Her smile fades. Her eyes open, but they do not fall on Dani, not just yet. They’re turned to the sky, a lovely early autumn blue, focused on a memory Dani can’t see. “Was alone for a long time. Eons, it felt like. Family broken up, no friends.” She laughs, a sad one. “I was stupid. Didn’t even know what the fuck an eon would be, back then. Didn’t know what love was, either, but I thought I did. Nice smile, nice eyes, pretty words spillin’ from a pretty mouth. Someone to be alone with, at the end of a day pretendin’ that what we were doing was honest. She had me convinced. She had my trust, even, and she knew it, I was wrapped so damn tight ’round her finger.” A pause. A bird trills somewhere up a tree. “One night we get home. It’s a tiny little place in Bethnal Green. Junk everywhere. We’re baskin’ in our spoils, and she asks, ‘Are you lonely?’ Out of the fuckin’ blue. ‘Are you lonely?’ I tell her, ‘I don’t know. Maybe not, cause you’re here.’ And I thought it would last, what we had, cause I was in love and I was lonely and she was the only person I was close to.” A deep breath, slightly shaky now. “I stayed with her. I slept next to her and she… she did this.”

The bite. Two small, silvery marks on the left side of Jamie’s neck. They’re the size of pinpricks, not noticeable unless one actively looks for them. Dani had kissed it that night and felt Jamie shiver in her arms.

Jamie continued, old poison slipping into her tone, “She did this thing to me and called it good. Called it _fair._ It was then I realized loneliness has a price.” Another pause. “I took the blame for a hit. Fell for her. But if I hadn’t…” She trails off.

“You wouldn’t’ve ended up here,” Dani finishes.

Jamie nods. “Yeah.” Scoffs. “Feels like a damn beast half the time. Bearable with Hannah and Owen around, but… still heavy.”

Dani scoots closer to her on the grass, gets close enough that her T-shirt-covered shoulder brushes Jamie’s flannel-covered one. She swallows. Asks, “Do you want company?”

At last Jamie’s eyes find hers. Green-blue, bright with bewilderment. “Dani—”

“Do you want it? While you wait for whatever this is to run its course?”

Jamie’s head shakes in denial, almost violently, mouth pulled into a terse frown. “You’re human, Dani,” she says.

“And you’re not?” She takes Jamie’s hand tightly. “I know the things you’ve felt. And I can’t imagine feeling them over and over again for a century, or two, even. But those things are part of life.” She squeezes. “I’m not saying you won’t feel them. I’m saying _we’ll_ feel them.”

Jamie doesn’t shake her head this time. Instead she turns, taking Dani’s face between her hands. Dani steadies her with hands on Jamie’s back.

Eventually, after a long moment, Jamie nods.

Dani kisses her. Accepting fate, perhaps, or accepting that they’re creating their own. Jamie’s lips travel to her neck, retracing paths they’d made weeks ago, sharp teeth grazing her pulse when before she hadn’t done so. Dani leans her head to the left—an offering. Not because it’s fair, but because it’s a share of the burden.

**Author's Note:**

> And now back to my usual (mostly) canon schedule...


End file.
